it is to find the well-bred Englishman as it would have found the just Roman--and, above all things, it is not to derange the imperturbable disdain with which he is enfeoffed to his inferiors. Lady D. was going to Scotland: a violent storm arose. Her ladyship was calmly dressing her hair, when the steward knocked at the cabin-door. "My lady," said the man, "I think it right to tell you there is every chance of our being drowned." "Do not talk to me, you impertinent fellow, about drowning," said her aristocratical ladyship, perfectly unmoved--"that's the captain's business, and not mine."
Our great idea of civility is, that the person who is poor should be exceedingly civil to the person who is wealthy: and this is the difference between the neighboring nations. Your Frenchman admits no one to be quite his equal--your Englishman worships every one richer than himself as undeniably his superior. Judge us from our servants and our shopkeepers, it is true we are the politest people in the world. The servants, who are paid well, and the shopkeepers, who sell high--scrape, and cringe, and smile. There is no country where those who have wealth are treated so politely by those to whom it goes; but at the same time there is no country where those who are well off live on such cold, and suspicious, and ill-natured, and uncivil terms among themselves.
The rich man who travels in France murmurs at every inn and at every shop; not only is he treated no better for being a rich man--he is treated worse in many places, from the idea that because he is rich he is likely to give himself airs. But if the lower classes are more rude to the higher classes than with us, the higher classes in France are far less rude to one another. The dandy who did not look at an old acquaintance, or who looked impertinently at a stranger, would have his nose pulled and his body run through with a small-sword--or damaged by a pistol-bullet--before the evening was well over. Where every man wishes to be higher than he is, there you find people insolent to their fellows, and exacting obsequiousness from their inferiors--where men will allow no one to be superior to themselves, there you see them neither civil to those above them, nor impertinent to those beneath them, nor yet very courteous to those in the same station. The manners, checkered in one country by softness and insolence, are not sufficiently courteous and gentle in the other. Time was in France, (it existed in England to a late date,) when politeness was thought to consist in placing every one at his ease. A quiet sense of their own dignity rendered persons insensible to the fear of its being momentarily forgotten. Upon these days rested the shadow of a bygone chivalry, which accounted courtesy as one of the virtues. The civility of that epoch, as contrasted with the civility of ours, was not the civility of the domestic or the tradesman, meant to pamper the pride of their employer, but the civility of the noble and the gentleman, meant to elevate the modesty of those who considered themselves in an inferior state. Corrupted by the largesses of an expensive and intriguing court, the "grand seigneur," after the reign of Louis XIV., became over-civil and servile to those above him. Beneath the star of the French minister beat the present heart of the British mercer--and softly did the great man smile on those from whom he had any thing to gain. As whatever was taught at Versailles was learnt in the Rue St. Denis, when the courtier had the air of a solicitor, every one aped the air of the courtier; and the whole nation with one hand expressing a request, and the other an obligation, might have been taken in the attitude of the graceful old beggar, whose accost made such an impression upon me.